


Keep Your Head Low, If You Wanna Keep Your Head

by TheseusInTheMaze



Series: Dead Gods [3]
Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Lightning Strike - Freeform, M/M, Magical Realism, Music, Survival, navel gazing, post apocalyptic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 16:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16622708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/pseuds/TheseusInTheMaze
Summary: Conventional wisdom says to stay away from cities - gods like cities. Brian never was one to follow conventional wisdom.





	Keep Your Head Low, If You Wanna Keep Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> This has a few references to my fic _Our Lady of the Underground,_ but it isn't necessary to read that in order to understand this.

Conventional wisdom said to stay away from certain places.

It made sense, of course.

Humankind, as a species, had survived because of conventional wisdom, both before the days gods walked the Earth, and after.

Admittedly, a lot of the conventional wisdom had changed. 

Brian hadn't been alive in the days before the gods came back, obviously - that had been his grandparent's generation. He didn't know much of the conventional wisdom from those days, beyond stuff he'd picked up from old books. 

The conventional wisdom these days was... frustrating, for complicated reasons, but a lot of things in life were frustrating for complicated reasons, so really, what was one more thing?

Sometimes, as he walked down the road with salt and bread and iron in his pockets, his clothes on inside out, eyes painted on the back of his neck, jingling with good luck charms, he wondered what it had been like in the old days.

According to his grandparents, there hadn't been any gods back then - or maybe there had been gods, but people hadn't known anything about them.

There hadn't been any gods, any angels, any principalities, any monsters, any of that business. 

Things followed something like logic.

The logic that went on these days made no _sense_ , followed no consistent rule, and it rankled.

"You would have been a scientist," Brian's grandmother told him, when he'd asked half a million questions about how the world worked, why the sky was blue and where the sun went at night. 

"He could still be a scientist," Brian's mother had said.

"Not these days, he can't," his grandmother had responded. "When the Bride of the World brings the moon out during the day, or the Lady of the Underground makes precious stones grow like trees."

His grandmother had indeed had a point, back then, and she still had a point today, even as long dead as she was.

But now was now, and all he could do was focus on the "now."

The now currently involved walking along the road, his pack heavy on his back, following the glass footprints.

Those were a recent development - there had been people talking of some new god - a god of seeing, a god of knowing, with wings that hurt your head to look at and too many blinking eyes. 

And there were footprints made of glass, only it turned out that it wasn't _actual_ glass, it was just the sand fusing together, where some divine being had stepped on it. 

That was the way it worked, wasn't it?

Gods left their mark on the world, wherever they went.

It was probably a bad idea, following the footprints, going towards the old city, but... well, fuck it.

Brian made a point of being as boring, as ordinary as possible - made a point of being someone who would never attract the attention of a god, or whatever process it was that made them.

Brian would be fine.

* * * 

Brian sat in a tavern, and he ate mutton pie, listening to talk around him.

It was the usual talk - this person was having a good harvest, that person was getting married.

There were about fifteen people in the room, all told, and everyone was careful about what they talked about, what they didn't talk about. 

You didn't want to attract the wrong kind of attention.

Brian was considered a madman, going out into the places that he did.

But then again, Brian came back with news, came back with _stuff_. 

Money wasn't a thing anymore - why would it be, when there was no government to back it, and no use for it beyond what it represented - but... well, people loved novelty.

And here was Brian, with plastic flowers, or canned food from before the gods came around, or old electronics,which had been sheltered in some warehouse.

People were afraid of going to the old places, for a whole variety of reasons - in the old days, it had been memories, and the people with too many memories had gone back to cities, and some of them had become angels, or gods, or monsters, or things beyond the imagining of any human being.

But Brian was a thoughtful man, an intellectual man.

He sat in the tavern, eating a slice of mutton pie, and he looked at the map in front of him, and he planned.

A man sat at the long table next to him, and Brian looked up at him.

He was a younger man with a beard and brown eyes, and he was wearing a button down, the sleeves rolled up around his elbows, his arms and the backs of his hands covered in hair.

"Are you the guy who goes into the old places?"

"Yep," said Brian, and he bit back a sigh.

He didn't want to get interrogated about this, especially when he had to get up early and walk tomorrow. 

There was going to be rain tomorrow - everyone was saying you could tell, although the weather was always a bit dicey. 

Too much weather prediction could get a bit too... godly, and more than one amateur meteorologist had found lightning stirring from their fingers and rain falling from their eyes.

"I heard it's bad luck to sing in that bit of the city, if the weather is bad," said the man.

"Hm?"

Brian raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry," said the man, and he rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. "I, uh... I know you've been around here before, but usually in the summer, not when it's rainy weather."

"Right," said Brian.

"So yeah," said the man, and he cleared his throat. "Maybe don't sing in the ruins, if you can't see the sun."

"Any particular reason why?"

"There's a god," the man said. "A god who likes music, who lives in the clouds."

"What kind?"

"Weather," said the man, and he rested his elbows on the table, his chin on his hands. "He's supposed to be pretty decent, as far as that type goes."

"Right," said Brian.

A god being "pretty decent" was all well and good, except for the fact that divinity infected people like radiation poisoning, and even the most well meaning god could turn someone into something out of a myth. 

"Sorry to bother you," the man said, and he offered a hand. "My name is Barry. My parents run this place."

"Brian," said Brian, and he offered his own hand.

Barry squeezed it, and then looked sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck. "I was, uh, wondering...."

"Yes?"

"Do you happen to have any art supplies? Or have you found any, when you went looking?"

"What kind?"

"Any, really. I know paper is mostly a lost cause, but if you've found any pencils, the good kind of charcoal, maybe some paint... I can trade for it."

Brian nodded.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. 

"Thank you," said Barry, and his expression went a bit wistful again. "I used to go into the city, when I was younger."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah," said Barry. "Before my parents got on my ass about keeping the place up."

"Right," said Brian, and he took another bite of his pie.

It was good pie - the crust was flaky, the meat tender, the vegetables crisp.

It was nice to eat a meal that he hadn't cooked over a fire, he had to admit.

He liked the life he lived, learning things, finding things, trading things, but... well.

Certain creature comforts were few and far between. 

"Can I... can I ask you a question?"

Barry looked faintly uncomfortable, and he was rubbing his hands together, fiddling with the apron that he had tied around his waist.

"No," Brian said, completely straight faced, and then he grinned a bit at Barry's stricken look. "What is it?"

"Why do you go out? I mean... to find stuff, obviously, but we can also _make_ stuff, which usually lasts longer and isn't quite so likely to result in people turning into... whatnot."

Brian took another bite, and he rested his elbows on the table, staring into the fire, his expression thoughtful. 

He was trying to find a way to explain it, although even he wasn't entirely sure what it was sometimes.

"I think... I think, even though the world has gone weird, that we should remember the way it used to be," Brian said slowly. "We shouldn't lose our history, just because things are dangerous. And I mean, there are worse things to be than a god."

Barry raised an eyebrow.

He looked unconvinced.

"I mean," Brian said, "it's... you lose your humanity, true, but it's better than being _dead_. I've read some old stories, about things that happened - magical fallout may be a thing, but at least it's not actual fallout."

"I dunno," said Barry, in a disbelieving tone. "I've heard some horror stories. People growing extra limbs, babies born with teeth -"

"That's not magical fallout," Brian interrupted. "That just happens sometimes."

"They were fangs," said Barry, his voice deadpan.

"... okay, yeah, no, that'd be magical fallout," said Brian, faintly sheepish.

"Right," said Barry, and then he shrugged, looking sheepish himself. "I don't know much about times before. I spend most of my time running this place, or doing art."

"Right," said Brian, and he wiped crumbs off of his mouth. "And you want art supplies?"

"Right," said Barry. "I can trade you for it. I've got a ton of useful stuff."

"Like what?"

"Candles," said Barry. "Cloth. Preserves."

"Cloth?"

"My girlfriend has a sheep farm," said Barry, "and she makes her own cloth."

That would explain how well made Barry's shirt was.

"I'll keep it in mind," said Brian. 

"Thanks," said Barry, and he smiled at Brian, a full face kind of smile that made his eyes light up.

Brian smiled back in spite of himself. 

Maybe he was spending too much time by himself, if he was feeling this awkward from such a simple conversation.

"And don't sing in the ruins," Barry added. "Not if it's raining."

"I'll keep it in mind," Brian said. "Could I get more pie, possibly?"

"Of course," said Barry, and then he was getting up again, taking Brian's plate with him. 

* * *

Brian slept in a soft, warm bed that night, slept like the dead.

He didn't have any dreams. 

He woke up before the sun, getting dressed, slinging his pack onto his back. 

It rattled faintly, with his pans and pots, with the whole variety of _stuff_ that he kept on him.

He walked out into the cloudy, misty morning, following the glass footprints. 

* * * 

The glass footprints abruptly just... stopped, in the middle of the road.

Brian frowned down at them, and then he looked around.

He was on the outskirts of the old city now - not one of the big cities from the old days, but a small one.

Well, small according to some of the books that he'd read - the idea of a place this big being considered "small" was, frankly, mind boggling, but things changed, didn't they?

He eyed the glass footprints, debating if he wanted to see if he could find them again, and then he turned, and he made his way down the great, open boulevard of the empty city, inhabited by the rusted hulks of dead cars and other, stranger things.

When whatever it was that had happened... well, happened, some of the technology had changed.

Brian's grandparents hadn't ever gone into detail about it - they'd mentioned metal growing like flesh, except even flesh didn't grow like that, exactly, from what he'd managed to coax out of his grandfather, when the old man had been in the mead.

Brian had seen those twisted, strange shapes before, when he'd explored other places, but this was his first time at this city.

His hand rested on the handle of his machete, and he kept his steps light, his eyes scanning around him.

It wasn't so much that he was worried about being attacked by anything - animals left people alone, and even if they didn't, well... animals had gods, too, and they were less accommodating than the human ones. 

If a god could ever be considered human. 

He walked quietly, his boots crunching on the crumbling asphalt, and he looked around him, taking it all in.

There were great, tall buildings made of glass, and some of the glass was still intact, gilded with gold by the rising sun, the many rooms like great, gaping eyes.

He'd seen a dead beast that size once - some great goliath _thing_ , a thing out of nightmares, bigger than a person could comprehend, its eye sockets big enough to drive a draft horse through, its teeth like monoliths. 

There was a crash to Brian's left, and he had unsheathed his machete and spun around, brandishing it, before he'd had time to think.

... it was an old glass bottle, knocked off of something by the wind.

Brian put his machete back, his hand over his chest, and he snickered a bit in spite of himself. 

“A little jumpy, huh?”

He was in the habit of talking to himself - he couldn’t entirely help it, since it wasn’t like there was anyone else to talk to, most of the time. 

Still.

The place was dead quiet - there wasn’t even any birdsong.

These old ruins tended to be. 

* * *

A good chunk of the city seemed to be made up of the ridiculously tall glass buildings - they gave him the creeps.

He’d seen one of them fall over once, from a good way off - some mythical beings having some kind of quarrel, and then there had been a great glass tower, sending out a dust cloud dark enough to blot out the sun.

That had been a rough couple of days.

He found the smaller buildings, eventually - he had to climb a lot of dead cars for it, and some of the cars weren’t just colloquially dead, either - there was the sensation of bones under his hand, when he vaulted over the hood of one, and another one had what were clearly eye sockets.

Welp.

He’d seen things that weren’t entirely alive turned into things that… were, but it was still eerie.

“You’d think I’d be used to it by now,” he told the empty street.

He didn’t get any response, thank fuck.

* * *

There was a music store, its door barricaded by a bunch of filing cabinets.

Brian pulled them aside, then slid in… and stopped, in actual awe.

There were instruments.

Actual instruments, and they seemed in pretty good shape.

The air of the place smelled stale, as if it had been shut up for who even knew how long.

_Is this what it was like, for Howard Carter?_ flitted across Brian’s mind, but no, this place had only been closed for… what, maybe a hundred years?

Not even that long, probably.

Brian just stood there, looking around, and he tried to ignore the way his heart was leaping up into his throat.

There were brass instruments, pianos, drum kits… everything looked dusty, and the string instruments probably needed to be retuned, but otherwise, it was all in good shape.

He took steps towards the piano, a great, sprawling thing, his heart in his throat.

Outside, thunder rumbled, but he was too lost in his own head to notice.

* * *

Brian tuned the piano.

His mother had kept a piano in their front room, and she’d taught Brian how to play it. 

A lot of people were nervous about that kind of thing - music making brought the attention of gods and other things of that nature.

His mother had always countered that, if they wanted to keep being human, they had to keep doing human things, and really, was there anything more human than music?

Nobody really had an argument for that one.

So Brian knew how to play a piano - knew how to _maintain_ a piano, which had gotten him more than one hot meal over the course of his troubles.

His parents had been dead for years - it had been peaceful, they had lived good lives, but still - seeing the piano was enough to remind him of them.

He could almost hear his mother’s voice, looking at it, and the ache of missing her climbed up his throat like a stone, settling in the back of his mouth.

He cleared his throat, and he wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, getting himself back together.

He was going to tune this piano.

It was a waste of time, a waste of energy, a waste of a whole bunch of things, but… fuck it.

His mother had been right. 

People needed people things.

The rain pattered down outside, the thunder occasionally rumbling like the stomach of a giant.

* * *

Brian sat back on his heels, some hours later, sweating in the stale air, his breath coming in shallow pants.

He’d fixed the thing, somehow.

_How_ had a piano managed to stay in such good condition was his main question - pianos were fiddly things.

It was one reason they were so rare.

But here one was, and any warning that Brian had heard fled his head like rabbits from a fox, because here was a chance to make music - actual _music_ \- and there were things that he needed more than he needed anything else. 

So he sat down in front of the piano, his pack on the floor, and he ignored the sound of the rain, as he pressed down on the first key.

It sang out true and sweet, and something in his chest went tight as a knot, his hands shaking a bit as he pressed down on a different key.

He’d checked all of the keys, adjusted them to make sure that they all worked, but now they were all working. 

He stretched his fingers out reverently, and then… then he began to play.

* * *

Brian lost himself in the music he played - he utterly forgot the first rule of any kind of scavenging, which was to keep your head low, not to attract attention.

He sang along to his own playing, his fingers banging away at the keys, and maybe it wasn’t as _good_ as it could have been, but it wasn’t bad, either.

It was just him, singing along to the rhythm of the rain, bits of songs that his parents had taught him, songs that he remembered from his own childhood, songs that he made up within the confines of his own head.

It wasn’t until the lightning struck outside the door that he realized what a mistake he’d made.

* * *

Brian had been singing long enough that he was just playing by feel, when the lightning struck.

It was a sound like a scream, and a flash of light so bright that Brian’s eyes were burning with the after image, and he screamed, falling off of the bench, lying flat on the floor and staring in terror out the window.

And then… incongruously, a fist knocked on the window.

Brian, still gibbering, stayed on the floor, staring.

A face poked through the window next - a craggy face, with wild, flyaway hair and eyes that were entirely too bright.

Even though the rain was pelting down, the hair was still flyaway, and there were flashes of sparks in it.

_Don’t sing when there are clouds in the sky_ flashed through Brian’s mind, and he kicked himself.

Stupid.

_Stupid_.

How could he be so fucking stupid?!

The god - and it was a god, because how could that be anything but a god? - stared into Brian’s face, expression worried.

His lips were moving, but Brian couldn’t make out what he was saying. 

Then there was another flash of lightning, and the god was gone, although the rain came down harder.

Brian lay on the floor for a long time, his stomach tied in knots, his heart beating in his throat.

He had some experience with gods - he usually hid when he saw them.

This was the first time he’d made prolonged eye contact with one.

His whole body was buzzing from it - from the electrical current in the air, from the sensation of being around divinity, which could be like a drug.

He licked his lips, after who knew how long, and he stood up carefully.

Right.

Okay.

He was going to camp out for the night - someplace else - and then he was going to leave this city in the morning, because any place that had an active god wandering around wasn’t worth the trouble.

That was probably the reason the place was so damn deserted.

He was going to do that.

Any second now, he was going to do it.

* * *

Brian ended up re-barricading the door.

He knew that he should have stayed away - making any kind of music around here was clearly a recipe for disaster - but the idea of the damp getting to any of those lovely instruments broke his heart.

So he barricaded the door again, and he made his way through the city, getting rained on, trying to find a place to camp for the night.

The lightning lit the sky up, and the thunder was loud, like the barking of a huge dog.

It was almost enough to be overwhelming - when he was a child, he’d been afraid of lightning storms - but this just seemed to go on and on.

He could tell it was a magical storm - the lightning and the thunder didn’t go anywhere, didn’t do anything, just stayed, right there over him; a flash of light, a low, deep rumble, again and again, and then Brian was squinting at a sign for a furniture showroom, and giving a mental shrug.

It’d be dry, it’d have a place to sleep.

That was good enough for him.

* * *

Brian bedded down on a bed roughly the size of a continent, which smelled like dust, but it was soft, and the springs were still good.

He ate a slice of cold mutton pie, drinking water from his flask, and he tried not to be too creeped out by all the old, silent furniture.

This whole city seemed to be god touched - did it rain every night?

What kind of god lived here, anyway?

Maybe he was thinking too deeply into it - it was generally a bad idea to think about gods too hard or too long, or else divinity could worm its way into your mind.

Still, it felt safe, within the confines of this dark place, within the equally dark confines of his skull, to pursue it.

The god who had looked at him through the window hadn’t looked particularly… divine.

He had looked like a person, almost.

Except that he hadn’t, in a way that Brian hadn’t been able to put his finger on.

Other than the sparks, and the brightness of his eyes.

There was something… else.

Something deep and old and alien, that separated the god’s face from that of any other man.

Brian sprawled out on the great bed, wrapped in a blanket that smelled like woodsmoke and himself, and he let his eyes slide closed.

It had been a joy, to feel his fingers working along the ivory of a piano again.

God, the thing had sounded sweet - he’d tuned it pretty well, all things considered.

Who would have thought that the ability to tune a piano would come in handy again?

“Thanks, Mom,” Brian whispered into the darkness, and he sighed, letting sleep carry him off.

* * *

It was still raining when Brian woke up, and that was a dilemma, wasn’t it?

He didn’t want to go out into the rain. 

The god seemed tied to the rain, and Brian… didn’t want to deal with that. 

To put it lightly.

But staying in this city meant possibly running into that same god again, which was just… a pain in the ass, and Brian didn’t know how to deal with that.

This was the first time he’d dealt with this kind of dilemma, which was a surprise, come to think of it.

He groaned, scrubbing his face with his hands, and then he gathered his things up and left the furniture warehouse.

Only to be confronted with letters burned into the ground, a branching fern pattern around them, the air still smelling like ozone.

_Sorry for scaring you like that. You’ve got a nice voice._

A message from a god, no doubt delivered in lightning.

Brian wasn’t sure if he was terrified, or touched.

He left the city like his ass was on fire, and resolved to keep it out of his mind.

* * *

Brian’s resolve to avoid the city lasted three months.

They were pretty good months - he was productive, even!

But at night, he’d remember the feel of the piano keys under his fingers, or the sensation of singing in the empty room, and he’d be struck with a longing so profound it almost hurt.

He was a man with an iron will, but even iron is weak to a strong enough magnet, and that was what this felt like.

Was he dealing with some kind of divinity poisoning?

It didn’t _feel_ like other people had described it - he just felt like himself, more or less.

Then again, that’s how that sort of thing went, didn’t it?

You thought you were perfectly fine, until you suddenly… weren’t. You grew extra arms, or began to see the ghosts of birds, or sang the music of the spheres.

“Singing the music of the spheres wouldn’t be so bad,” Brian said out loud, to the empty road.

He was following the glass footsteps again, his hands in his pockets, and the weather was warm now, warm enough that he was sweating, and the sky was empty of any clouds.

This was a safe place to sing, right?

He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed music, until he’d given himself to it, and now it was always on the edge of his mind.

Was this some sort of divinity poisoning, maybe?

Brian groaned, covered his eyes, and stared down at the glass footprints.

He could keep going - find another city to go scavenge through, until the itch left.

Or he could walk into the city, find that music store, and play the piano again, sing a little more.

It wasn’t raining - there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

He’d be fine, right?

Even within the confines of his own thoughts, he could tell that he was making justifications to himself, but… fuck it.

He wanted to make music.

He missed his mother, he missed doing people things - preferably with other people, but if there weren’t any around, he’d take what he could get, right?

* * *

As soon as Brian set foot in the city, it began to rain.

It was a hard, driving rain, like someone was dumping buckets of water over his head, and when he turned to go back, he saw footprints.

Not glass footprints, but wet footprints, filled with what looked like moss.

Hm.

He followed the footprints, as the wetness sloshed through him, and maybe it was a bad idea, but fuck it.

This was _all_ a bad idea, so what was one more bad idea?

Maybe he was spending too much time by himself - maybe he was going a little crazy, from exploring old ruins, from seeing nothing but empty buildings, rummaging through the lives of people who had been dead for longer than memory. 

The rain was dripping down his face like tears, or maybe it _was_ tears, and he was crying.

Or was he?

His head was full of fog, and his body was made of lead as he trudged along, until he stopped in the middle of the street, ringed in by glass, and he threw his head back and screamed.

The sky boomed back at him - a great, bone rattling clap of thunder.

Lightning struck in front of him, straight onto the ground, and it was bright enough that it blinded him, turning his whole vision white.

In the after images, he saw a person.

Or at least, a person shaped shadow.

He could make out the same craggy features, the same wild, bushy hair. 

He stared at it with his blind eyes… and then he fainted.

* * *

Brian woke up soaking wet, on a bed of moss.

Bits of his body were tingling, and the air smelled like ozone and petrichor. 

When he opened his eyes, he could _see_ thank fuck, although he wasn’t sure what it was that he was looking at, until he’d oriented himself.

A cement ceiling.

A cement ceiling, and his head hurt, and when he sat up, he found that his shoes were gone, and parts of his shirt had been burned.

There was a pattern along his arm now, like the delicate tracery of ferns, and he used a finger to follow it.

“You okay, man?”

The voice came from behind him, and he scrabbled, looking over his shoulder, then turning around.

There was a man standing there.

No, there was a god.

The god was man shaped, which was probably the source of the confusion, and his heart was in his throat.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Brian said, and he stared fixedly at his own knees.

His pants had been split open, and they were scraped up - there were scabs, although they seemed to be damp from all the rain.

Everything was damp - it was like trying to walk through pea soup.

“It’s not a bother, honestly,” said the god, and he was leaning against the outside of the doorway - he wasn’t in the building. “It’s nice to have some company.”

“Right,” said Brian.

This was the closest he’d ever been to a god - the most he’d ever interacted with one. 

You didn’t interact with gods - it was generally just a bad idea.

It was a good way to become a god yourself.

“I heard you singing, the other day,” said the god. “With the piano.”

“That was months ago,” said Brian, in spite of himself, because he was a pedant, even in the face of the loss of his mortality.

“Oh,” said the god. “Was it?”

He ran a hand through his wild mane of hair, and it sent a wave of sparks out into the air, where they danced like fireflies, before fading away.

“Yeah,” said Brian.

“I miss music,” said the god. “Human music, I mean.”

There were odd harmonies in his voice - the howl and whistle of the wind, the steady beat of the rain, the stifling silence of the snow.

“I’m sorry,” Brian said, because what else was he going to say?

The god shrugged.

“It is what it is,” he said. “You look familiar.”

“I’ve never been here before three months ago,” Brian said, which was true. 

“There used to be a lot more people,” said the god. “I think that you just end up getting repeats. Like baseball cards.”

And then he laughed.

"Baseball cards," Brian said.

"I wasn't ever really one for baseball," the god said. "Always preferred football myself."

"Right," said Brian.

He knew something about baseball and football and all of those sports - they had once been important to people, but who had time to think about that sort of thing?

Apparently, some of the big time sports players had become gods, but, well, what well respected public figure didn't, in the old days?

"You've got a great voice," said the god, and he was running his hands through his hair now, setting off sparks, and there was the rumble of thunder elsewhere.

Brian wanted to say... what did he want to say?

He'd never really talked to a god.

He shouldn't have been talking to a god, shouldn't have been letting a god take up any real estate in his head, but... well.

It was hard not to talk to someone with a human face, looking at him so intently.

"Thank you," said Brian.

"I knew someone who looked like you, a long time ago," said the god, and now his voice sounded wistful. "At least, I think I did. He also made music."

Brian nodded, making some sort of noncommittal noise. 

"Are you afraid of me?"

The god was still standing outside the parking structure.

"A little bit," said Brian, because a god can smell a lie on you.

"Why?"

The god looked genuinely puzzled.

"People like you... change people like me," said Brian. 

"Right," said the god, and then he sighed. "Well. I... I have to go now."

"Go?"

"I don't belong down here, not really," said the god. "But...come back some time, maybe? We could have a jam session."

He grinned at Brian, and his teeth were like flashes of lightning, his eyes as dark as a thunderhead at midnight.

And then there was a loud crash and a flash of lightning, and the god was gone.

Brian stayed sitting on the floor, still staring up at the concrete.

There were more rusted out, dead cars. 

His shoes were gone, his shirt was burned in places, but his pack was still there, and that was the important part, right?

Okay.

He could do this. 

He'd get up, he'd go to the edge of the city, he'd never come back.

He'd have to get a new pair of boots, a new shirt - it might have been summer now, but it was going to get cold at some point, and then he'd be stuck, wouldn't he?

Okay.

He was going to get up, walk to the edge of the city, make his way to the tavern. 

Maybe he'd ask Barry for a pair of boots - he could work for them. It might be nice to stay in one place for a bit, not range around quite so much.

That was a good plan.

An excellent plan.

* * *

Brian made his way back to the music store.

There was moss growing along the sidewalk, and it was soft, squishy under Brian's toes.

The fern pattern on Brian's arm was still there, a delicate tracery, and he'd have to ask around about that - was he god touched?

Was he going to start seeing ghosts, or be able to talk to plants?

He didn't want to think about it too hard.

Instead, he slid into the music store, slid down in front of the piano, his hands spreading out, flexing over the keys.

This was dumb.

This was more than dumb, this was _dangerous_ \- this was the way to lose his mortality, to lose his very self in the flash of lightning and the crash of thunder.

But _oh_ , how he wanted the music.

His heart ached for people things, for his parents, for singing and dancing and community.

His hands danced over the keys, and it wasn't until he was three songs in that he realized that he was singing along to the tempo of the rain, which was beating down outside, like some kind of metronome.

He sang like his heart was breaking, words that didn't entirely make sense, or songs that were dumb, but it was _music_ , actual music, music made by something other than his own voice.

When he was hoarse and his fingers were aching, he leaned back, his eyes sliding shut.

The rain was still going, and it was tapping along with the beat of his heart. 

He stood up, stretching, his arms over his head, his back cracking.

He wasn't as young as he used to be, and sitting hunched over a piano was a little harder on his spine than he'd thought it'd be. 

His grandfather had mentioned that in the old days, when people worked at desks all the time, there had been a myriad of back problems.

People still had back problems, obviously - both of his grandparents complained pretty loudly about them, especially after a day of hoeing or weed pulling - but this was a new sensation.

Brian stepped out of the music store, and saw a rainbow arching over the sky. 

Huh.

It might have been a coincidence… or it might not have been.

Maybe he was thinking too deeply into things, but fuck it.

“You’re welcome,” he called up, and that was a bad idea - interacting with gods was _always_ a bad idea. 

And yet.

Okay. 

He made his way towards the outskirts of the city.

* * *

Barry thought that Brian had been struck by lightning.

At least, that’s what Brian was able to discern, from the way Barry was babbling.

“You were singing in the city, weren’t you?”

Barry had Brian in a room, and he was looking at him critically.

He was examining Brian carefully, and Brian tried not to be too embarrassed by it.

It was nice to have someone care.

“I wasn’t thinking, and I started to whistle,” said Brian. “That was my mistake.”

“You’re lucky you got out in one piece,” said Barry, and he was examining the marks on Brian’s arm. “It just blew your shoes off and scarred you up a bit. It could’ve stopped your heart!”

“I might’ve felt something like that,” Brian admitted. “It’s all a bit of a blur.”

“RIght,” said Barry, and he sighed. “Shit. I’m sorry that happened, but hey. At least you didn’t run into any god, right?”

Brian opened his mouth to say something - about the god he’d met, about the rainbow, the lightning scoured writing on the asphalt.

Instead, he just nodded.

“Are you going to be alright?”

Barry was shifting from foot to foot, rubbing his hands together.

“Could I work off a pair of boots, maybe a new shirt or two?”

The urge to move on wasn’t itching down Brian’s back - if anything, he wanted to make his way back to the city, which was a _supremely_ stupid move, in the history of stupid moves.

And yet..

“Of course,” said Barry. “You can bunk in the barn - we’ve got a loft with a bed.”

“RIght,” said Brian. “Sounds like a plan.”

He gave Barry what he hoped was a reassuring smile, as his heart beat faster.

The scar on his arm was pink; pinker than his own skin, almost like a fresh burn.

“You’re lucky you got away with just a lightning flower,” said Barry, indicating the scar. “It could’ve gone much worse.”

“Oh yeah,” said Brian. “Have you seen anything like this before?”

“A few times,” said Barry. “The god showed up a while ago. After the glass footprints, but not by much. I was very young, when that happened.”

“What brought on the glass footprints?”

Brian had been wondering that.

“Some… thing walked along this way,” said Barry. “You know how it is. An angel or a god or something, and they change the world, and the rest of us have to actually _deal_ with it.”

“Right,” said Brian.

“The city was empty,” said Barry, “according to my parents, at least. But then the god came, and people started getting struck by lightning.”

Brian nodded.

“Right,” he repeated.

“I dunno why the god came here,” he said, and he sighed. “Maybe it followed the person who made the glass footprints.”

“You think?”

Barry shrugged.

“Maybe?”

“So where’s this loft I’ll be staying in?”

“Right,” said Barry. “C’mon.”

* * *

Brian stayed at the tavern for three months, as the weather got cold and snow fell down around them.

Barry was a good boss, and he ran a good inn.

Brian mainly helped out on the sidelines - he cooked, he washed dishes, he chopped wood. 

It was nice, to bed down in a bed, even if it was in a slightly drafty barn that smelled of animals.

Occasionally, Brian would go sit out on the roof, bundled up in more wool clothing than he knew what to do with, and he’d watch the city in the distance.

The sky would roil and the lightning would flash - it was the kind of beautiful that was more than humans could ever understand, could ever hope for.

It was enough to make something in Brian’s chest feel empty.  
‘  
The scar - the lightning flower, as Barry called it - stayed, and it ached sometimes. 

People stared, but apparently he wasn’t the only person who’d been struck by lightning around here.

Brian wondered, vaguely, if the god would chase after him - he wondered why the god was staying in the city in the first place.

Some gods were gods of specific places, but Barry had said that the god had showed up one day, and then things had changed. 

Maybe the god had manifested there?

Brian would sit up on the roof of the barn, as the snow swirled around him and the lightning flashed, all the way off around the great buildings that rose up like the teeth out of the world’s largest underbite.

* * *

When the snow cleared up, Brian cleared out.

“I’ll come back,” he told Barry, as he pulled his boots on, shouldering his pack. “I will. I promise. But I need to not be around people for a little bit.”

“I understand,” said Barry. “You’re always welcome here, you know that, right?”

Brian grinned at him in spite of himself.

“Sheesh,” he said. “You put out one fire, and suddenly people are attached to you.”

It had been a small kitchen fire, and Brian had just slapped a lid on the thing, but it had left Barry in a gibbering panic, and he’d managed to impress the man with his ability to keep his head in a rough situation.

Barry burst out laughing, and he clapped Brian on the shoulder.

“Something like that,” he told Brian, and then they hugged, and Brian was on his way towards the city again, his pack on his back, his booted feet crunching on the asphalt.

* * *

Brian stepped into the long streets of the city, and he looked up into the sky. 

It was cloudy, the thunder giving an occasional rumble, and Brian took a deep breath, about to start singing. 

Then he paused and took his boots off.

He was sitting on the ground, carefully rolling his socks off of his feet, when it struck him that this wasn’t just a minute of impulsive stupidity.

He was going to try to call a god to him, and he was _planning_ for it.

Oh god.

Hopefully, people wouldn’t suspect anything of him.

Hopefully, there wouldn’t be stories about the mad trader who cavorted with gods - that could ruin a man’s reputation. 

But now his boots were off, tied around the strap of his pack.

If he got struck by lightning, at least he’d still have shoes at the end of it.

He opened his mouth, and he sang a verse from a song his father had learned from _his_ father, a sweet, haunting melody.

_How I wish, how I wish you were here…._

And then there was another voice joining in with his voice, harmonizing, and the lightning flashed close enough that Brian’s singing faltered, the “crash” of it deafening.

Brian couldn’t hear himself singing, but the god was standing next to him, and the god was grinning wider than a human should have been able to, singing along.

The god knew all the words, and the notes trailed off, fading like the fog under the morning sun.

“You like Pink Floyd!” 

Brian looked at the god for the first time - actually took him in.

The god’s skin kept changing color, like the sky, and Brian hadn’t ever noticed that before. The god’s hands were long, the thumbs outsized, and the god’s hair was a curly, flyaway mess.

His eyes were bright as a flash of lightning, and his clothes were old - old like something out of a picture. A black t-shirt with the name “Rush” written across it, a pair of denim pants with holes in the knees.

The god seemed to be soaking wet, but _not_ at the same time - the water seemed to seep from him, but it wasn’t plastering his hair down, wasn’t soaking into his clothes.

“I mean,” said Brian, “my dad sang that to me.”

“It’s good your dad knows the classics,” said the god. “I’m Dan. Among other things.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to give me your name?”

There were _rules_ about these sorts of things, and it was faintly absurd that Brian was the one telling the god - telling Dan - about them. 

“It’s not my _only_ name,” said Dan, and he sounded faintly offended. “Even before I was emitting sparks every time I farted I had more than one name.”

“What, every time you fart?”

That very much wasn’t the thing that Brian should have focused on, but sometimes the mind latches on to strange things.

“Well, not every time,” said Dan. “I don’t always have a body in the first place.”

“... that shouldn’t work,” said Brian. “People need bodies. That’s what makes them people.”

Dan shrugged.

“This shit doesn’t always make sense,” said Dan. “If it made sense, it wouldn’t be divine.”

He laughed, and there was a humorless note to it.

“Why did you strike me? With lightning, I mean?”

The rain had picked up, and Brian’s hair was plastered down to his head, his bare feet curling against the wet pavement. 

“Sorry about that,” said Dan. “I can’t always… control it. It’s kind of my will, made crackling. So if I’m not concentrating super hard, if I look at something or thinking of something… well.”

“Right,” said Brian. 

“A lot of people avoid me,” said Dan, and he looked sad.

Brian looked down at Dan’s feet, and saw moss sprouting around his feet.

“I’m sorry,” said Brian. 

Dan shrugged. 

“Can’t be helped,” he said, then; “would you make music with me?”

“You’re a god,” said Brian. “Can’t you make it yourself?”

“I mean, yeah,” said Dan, and he looked faintly uncomfortable, “but you’re the first person who’s sung along with me.”

“Oh,” said Brian. 

“I can’t be on the land much longer,” said Dan. “The sky needs me.”

He looked up, and Brian looked up too, saw the sky roiling like right before a hurricane. 

“I’ll be here,” Brian found himself saying. “In three months. I’ll be here.”

“Right,” said Dan, and he gave a little salute with two fingers. “I’ll see you then. We can jam out!”

And then the god was gone, leaving Brain by himself on an empty street.

The moss was growing faster, spreading, and a few ferns were opening up as well.

Brian ran his fingers along the mark on his arm, staring faintly off into the middle distance.

Hm.

* * * 

Instead of moving on, Brian stayed in the city.

He probably shouldn’t have - too much exposure to divinity was liable to make him divine too, in time. 

But he was tired of traveling, but _also_ tired of being around other people.

He slept on the big couch in the furniture store, and he scavenged the city, finding it largely untouched, albeit weird.

Certain spots were poisoned with so much magic that even he wouldn’t touch it. 

He found overgrown gardens, he found orchards, he even found a whole sounder of wild pigs, although those he was going to avoid, at least for now.

And he kept coming back to the music store, at least every few days, singing himself hoarse, until he began to get a sore spot in his back, until his knuckles began to swell.

The music filled some hole in the back of his mind, satisfied him on a level he didn’t know he’d been missing.

He sat on the roof of one low building one night, surrounded by silent, empty buildings, and he realized, with some shock, that he missed Dan. 

He missed the patter of rain, he missed the flash of lightning, the low grumble of thunder.

He turned his face up towards the sky, and he sang, because he didn’t know what else to do, and it felt like the right thing.

Maybe he was beginning to lose his mortality - maybe he was becoming a god.

It was a thing to worry about, to be sure, but… well, what else was he going to do?

Back to the tavern?

… there was an appeal to that, but the whole time he was at the tavern, he’d been longing for the city, longing for the piano.

And now, here he was, in this empty place, surrounded by the corpses of buildings and cars.

He sighed, lying on his back and staring up at the sky, as the moon grinned down at him, the stars twinkling. 

* * *

Dan came back in high summer, when the air was thick with humidity and the heat was brutal enough that Brian was wandering around shirtless and shoeless, careful of broken glass, but otherwise heedless.

He had a garden, he had a water barrel, he had a bed.

He had a home.

Sort of.

He strayed away from the idea of calling any place “home,” as he had for such a long time, but it was about as close as he could get. 

He even had his own bed.

But one night, as he sat on the roof of the old house that he’d turned into his… base of operations, the lightning crashed and the clouds roiled.

The lightning struck right by Brian, and then Dan was standing there, wet and dripping, his hair crackling, his eyes bright.

“You’re very quiet, y’know that?”

Dan sat down next to Brian, and Brain tried not to think fo the moss growing into the roof of his house.

… well. 

Okay.

Apparently it was _his_ house, if he was thinking about moss growing on the roof.

That was a revelation he’d save a reaction for later. 

“I’m quieter than _you_ ,” Brian corrected, and a bit of him marveled - here he was, sassing a god.

“I have trouble keeping track of you when you’re wandering around out here. You’re like a ninja.”

“You’re trying to keep track of me?”

Brian wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Dan shrugged.

“You’re the only person here,” he said. “Humans don’t come here. I like having a person around.”

“As long as you don’t expect any worship,” Brian told Dan firmly.

“No, I don’t expect that, don’t worry,” said Dan, and he patted Brian on the knee, right where Brian’s cut off pants ended. 

The spot blossomed into another fern pattern - a lightning flower, Barry had called it.

It tingled, and Brian’s leg kicked forward. 

“Why’d you come to this city? The people, they said you weren’t here, always. Did you… become a god here?”

Was it rude, to ask after how someone became a god?

There were a lot of rules about avoiding gods, but not so much what to do if you were talking to gods.

Brian’s father had collected etiquette books from before the world had moved on; how would they put this in an etiquette book?

“I ran into someone who was traveling,” said Brian, “and it made me realize how much I missed people.”

Then… Dan’s ever changing face got redder - much redder.

If Brian didn’t know any better, he’d have thought that Dan was embarrassed.

“So… what, you came to another empty place?”

“I’m not allowed to come down that often,” said Dan, “but I thought maybe… well, I thought that maybe, if I was someplace that had high places, people could come see me more often, and I could come see them.”

“But that makes no sense. I’d think that you being _corporeal_ would be the problem, not the elevation,” said Brian, because he was himself, and he couldn’t let that kind of logical weirdness go uncommented on.

“I know,” said Dan, “but there are always exceptions to these things. I know someone who planted a ruby that became a pomegranate tree that reunited her with her true love.” 

Brian frowned.

“I don’t like magic,” he said. 

“I’m sorry,” said Dan. “But… I was wondering, would you sing with me?”

Brian looked sidelong at the god, at the way sparks played in Dan’s hair, making the shadows of Dan’s face stark. 

“What did you do, as a person?”

“I was a musician,” said Dan. “I miss it.”

“So how’d you become a storm god?”

Dan shrugged.

“How do any of these things happen?”

He sighed again, and it sounded like the wind whistling.

Brian whistled along, a small, short bit of melody.

Dan laughed, and he whistled back.

They went back and forth - little bursts of sound, melodies that wove together like cloth, until Dan was vocalizing and Brian was beating out some kind of time with his hands, and then Brian was singing as well, a bunch of made up words.

“Thank you,” said Dan. “I’ll come back. I promise.” 

And then Dan was gone, and Brian was left alone on the roof, more scar tissue pink on his skin, his head full of the crash of thunder.

* * *

Summer ended, fall started.

Brian put up his harvest in an old warehouse - he had grown more than he’d intended to, and had raided several grocery stores for jars, for pickling supplies.

They were going to be boring pickles, considering he couldn’t find proper spices like his parents had, but it was better than nothing, right?

He was going to bed down for the winter; it wasn’t the first winter he’d spent on his own.

His first… this alone, admittedly, but he’d be fine.

It was winter.

He could live in winter.

He even slaughtered a few deer, which was a messy, disgusting process that nonetheless brought about a good deal of protein and skins to make into clothing. 

He even had a good place to store it. 

He was all set for the winter. 

* * *

Dan came to see Brian when it was snowing.

It wasn’t _quite_ a blizzard, but not for lack of trying. 

Brian sat on the roof in a rigged tent, staring up at the sky, as the snow fell around him.

He missed Dan.

He didn’t want to admit to missing Dan, because… well.

Wanting to spend time around a god was one step below becoming a god, as far as many people saw it.

Why _was_ Brian so drawn to Dan, anyway?

It had to be more than just “they both loved music,” except that seemed to be it.

Brian had never met another person who loved music the way he did, not since his parents had died. 

Was this grief?

He sighed, scrubbing his face with his mittened hands.

What was he doing to himself, risking divine infection, magic contamination, living alone in this strange city by himself?

He was going to go mad, ascend to godhood and become a deity of the crazy people who wandered the lonely places.

He sighed again, and then thunder boomed, muffled by the snow, and there was Dan.

Dan looked different, in the winter.

He was still barefoot, still soaking wet, but something about his body was… different.

“You’re still here,” said Dan, and he looked surprised.

“I said I would be,” said Brian.

“You’re dressed differently,” said Dan.

“It’s a lot colder now,” said Brian.

“Is it?”

Dan looked puzzled.

“Do you not feel it?”

Brian stood up, and his boots crunched on the snow.

There were crocus sprouting under Dan’s feet.

Dan shrugged.“This is the time for snow,” he told Brian. “I missed you.”

“I thought it wasn’t that long for you,” Brian said.

Dan shrugged again. "There aren't any people like you,” he told Brian, and then he held his hands out. “Dance with me?”

“I thought you only liked singing?”

“I like all things to do with music,” said Dan earnestly.

“Can I touch you without you burning my clothes, or blowing my shoes off? I need those, to not die.”

“I won’t blow them off,” Dan said. “I promise.”

He looked very sad.

Brian stepped out into the snow completely, and he took his gloves off carefully, his hands pale in the dimness. 

He took Dan’s hands, and Dan’s skin was warm and wet, like a hot summer evening, and it was also cold enough to make Brian’s joints ache, and how did _that_ work?

The inconsistency of it annoyed him, and he must have been frowning, because Dan looked down into his face, his expression rueful.

“Am I that bad?”

“You’re not… it’s not….”

Brian sighed, and he stepped closer, until they were chest to chest, and his heart was beating wildly in his face, the snow crunching under his feet as they danced, carefully. 

It was the kind of sweet dance his parents had danced, the kind of dance he’d danced a few times, when the moon was high and the band played slow. 

The only music was the whistle of the wind, and the faint rumble behind Dan’s words.

They followed the beat of Brian’s heart, keeping time with it, and then Brian was turning his face up towards Dan’s, and then Dan’s mouth was pressed against his.

It was, simultaneously, too hot and too cold at the same time.

It was like kissing a glacier, or a fork of lightning. 

His heart was roaring in his ears, and it was like the roar of thunder, and when he pulled back, his face was doing… something.

His lips were numb, but they tingled, the same way his hands did, and when he pulled back, he saw that there was more of that fern pattern, along his palms, up his wrists, and then it was moving all the way up his arms, under his coat - he felt it moving.

Dan looked into his face, and Dan’s expression was faintly nervous, but then he smiled. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Brian said, or he tried to say, except his mouth was too cold.

“Sorry,” said Dan,his expression guilty. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have -” 

And then he was gone again, because… fucking gods.

* * *

Brian went back into his house, and then he was taking his coat off, he was examining his body, carefully.

The lightning flowers were all along his arms now - along his palms, the backs of his hands, up the insides of his arms, following the long veins. 

Um.

His lips were blue, as blue as the time he’d been a little kid and he’d fallen through the ice.

He groaned, and he covered his face with both hands, staring into the dingy bathroom mirror.

He didn’t know how he felt about all of this, except he needed to be elsewhere.

He needed to be _very_ elsewhere, around other people. 

He was obviously going crazy, if he was willing to kiss a _god_. 

He’d head back to the tavern once the snow cleared a bit, and he wasn’t in too much danger.

It would be fine.

It would all be fine.

* * *

Instead of leaving, Brian went back to the music store.

It was wickedly cold inside, and he didn’t dare light a fire.

He played until he couldn’t feel his fingers, then camped out in the library, reading as long as it was light out, sleeping on the dusty, broken down couches scattered about the place, going back to his house when his back started to hurt.

He didn’t leave when the snow started to melt, either - he planned crops, which he knew was a bad idea, considering he was planning on leaving, but… fuck it.

He slaughtered another deer, a skinny thing, and he carved things out of the various bones, talking to himself to fill the silence.

When the snow melted, he didn’t leave.

He planted, and he gathered, and he began to slowly, carefully, transport the instruments into his house.

He’d never be able to move the piano by himself, but he’d be able to live with that.

Sort of.

He taught himself new songs - not very well, but he taught himself nonetheless, over the long winter nights, tallow candles flickering, leaving spooky shadows and streaks of smoke on the wallpaper.

When he could go out barefoot, he began to eye the tall buildings with a thoughtful eye, his fingers running along the pink scar tissue on the insides of his wrists, the backs of his hands. 

He had, more or less, gotten used to it. 

His blue lips still caught him off guard sometimes, but… eh.

He got to sing every day, he got to make music every day, in one way or another.

Maybe he was going a little crazy, but with the world being what it was, who wouldn’t?

* * *

When the air smelled like green and petrichor, Brian decided to do something stupid.

… more stupid than living alone in an empty city inhabited by a god.

Maybe this was all really stupid, come to think of it, but… well.

Well.

He packed up a few days worth of food and water, a blanket. 

He went to the tallest building in the whole empty city, and he began to climb.

* * *

It was… unpleasant.

Somehow, support beams hadn’t rusted, and everything was, more or less, in working order.

People hadn’t bombed cities, or even tried to fight the gods - they’d just retreated, because really, what else were you supposed to do?

The cities were rotting gently, but slowly. 

And Brian climbed.

He climbed endless, _endless_ stairs, until his whole world was nothing but stairs, and his knees and hips and ankles ached, until he was so tired that he slept on landings without even a pillow.

This was a ridiculous thing to do, and he was probably going to regret it, but… fuck it.

Fuck it all.

What was the point of living, if not to do stupid things?

* * *

When Brian stepped onto the roof of the skyscraper, it was raining, and thunder was rumbling.

Would this work?

Dan had said that he wasn’t sure, but then again, these things always followed stupid rules, didn’t it?

Lightning struck nearby, close enough that the air smelled like ozone, and all of the hair on Brian’s body began to stand up.

There was a sensation, as if the whole world was listening intently. 

Whatever he was doing, this was the complete _opposite_ of keeping his head low. 

He cleared his throat, looking up into the sky, and then he opened his mouth, and he began to sing.

**Author's Note:**

> The "branching fern pattern" mentioned is a real thing! It's called a Lichtenberg figure. It shows up on people who've been struck by lightning (and other things that have had an electric charge run through them). 
> 
> * * *
> 
> Like this fic?
> 
> Want me to write you something like it, or something completely different?
> 
> Come talk to me on my tumblr, theseusinthemaze.tumblr.com!


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